


Awkward Pose

by ryukoishida



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Yoga, M/M, he's always smitten though, smitten!Makoto, yoga instructor!Haru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 21:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3544784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryukoishida/pseuds/ryukoishida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nagisa convinces Makoto that the best way to unwind himself from all the stress causes by his school workload is to attend hot yoga classes. He finds that the yoga studio is not the only thing that’s ‘hot’ when he meets the instructor of his class.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awkward Pose

**Author's Note:**

> The title is actually a name for one of the poses in Bikram yoga. Go figure.

It’ll be fun, they say.   
  
It’ll be good for his mind and body, Nagisa assures him with a toothy grin as he throws another pair of tight-fitting pants in his face to try on.  
  
They’ve obviously neglected to mention that there’s a lot more to hot yoga than the innocent, straightforward name has led him to believe: it’s a ninety-minute-long session of the Bikram-style yoga performed inside a very hot room, sure, but they fail to tell him that the room is not only excessively hot the moment he steps in, but it's also as if all the air has been sucked out of him and replacing it with viscous, humid heat that almost drowns him as he takes a slow, laboured breath.   
  
And this is all before he gets to the part where he’s actually doing yoga.   
  
They also didn’t mention that there’s going to be a lot of sweating involved, so the first time he’s registering at the counter when the upbeat lady asks him whether he'll be renting both a mat and a towel, Makoto has assured her that he has brought his own towel and he'll only be needing the mat, thanks.   
  
That's a terrible decision. Because when the woman offers him a towel, she doesn’t mean the type to wipe your sweat with but the huge rectangular ones that are meant to be spread on top of the mat.  
  
Needless to say, Makoto ends up making contortions with his limbs that his body is entirely unfamiliar with, muscles straining and stretching in all the weird places he didn’t know can ache as droplets of sweat trickle down the ends of his hair and into his eyes in a ceaseless stream, the loose t-shirt and the tight-enough-to-be-aesthetically-pleasing-but-too-tight-to-be-comfortable yoga pants soaking through so that the fabric is hugging his skin in the nastiest of ways. Makoto doesn’t even want to think about the fact that every time he does a pose that requires him to have his bare skin in contact with the vinyl mat, the gummy foam surface would grossly stick to his sweat-slicked skin.

 

For the record: it’s not a pleasant sensation. At all.  
  
Nagisa may have purposefully forgotten to inform him that the instructor for Friday afternoon’s beginner’s class is a gorgeous young man with hair black as the finest ink that gets darkened by sweat and plasters across his forehead and on the nape of his neck in adorable turfs, eyes blue as clear water and mesmerizing as the glittering surface of a summer’s sea, and a body as graceful – not to mention incredibly flexible, in a non-sexual-or-dirty manner, of course – as a Greek god.

 

Not that Makoto has ever seen a Greek deity, but he has been exposed to well-known sculptures and famous paintings from his History of Ancient Civilizations lectures, so yeah, he knows what he’s talking about, okay?

 

For someone who dons a snug, violet t-shirt that showcases the flex and flow of his upper arms and the elegant lines of his chest and back, and black yoga pants that stops just above his knees, displaying the milky skin of his calves that stretches down to his dainty ankles and tips of his toes, the man appears to be unaware of all the admiring and lewder-than-admiring gazes he’s attracting from students and other instructors alike.

 

Maybe he’s oblivious of all the attention, but Makoto has a suspicion that the dark-haired man simply doesn’t care.

 

His name is Haruka, apparently – “Haru”, for short, is what he asks the new students to call him by after he has quietly introduced himself in the front of the darkened room.

 

The only source of light glows in weak golden-orange fixtures near the front of the studio mounted at the bottom border of the full-length mirror that stretches from one end of the wall to the other, allowing the students to see the instructor’s movements on the small pedestal set up in the front and centre.

 

When Haru requests the new students to briefly introduce themselves, Makoto has no choice but to reveal his presence from his perfect hiding corner in the back of the studio, where he’s hoping to evade from other people’s judgmental stares if he happens to make a fool of himself during class.

 

It doesn’t help that immediately after the three new students have given their names, Haruka tells them in his collected but solemn tone, “For first-timers, if you feel in any way dizzy or nauseous, or you just know that your body is at its limit, don’t force yourself to stay. Just leave the room through the back entrance, take a drink of water and rest up until you feel ready to join us again. Understand?”

 

Makoto doesn’t realize that Bikram yoga is such an extreme physical activity that would require dire warnings. (As he will soon discover, however, balancing on a mat while manipulating his body into doing various poses that he’s not accustomed to in a room heated to forty degrees Celsius with a humidity level of forty percent exerts ten times more energy than when he swims laps at the pool for the same amount of time. One of the new students, a gangly, thirty-something year old man, has to drop out after only thirty minutes. Makoto’s very glad that he has decided to stick around until the end, though there has been a few times when he thinks his lungs are going to give out or his heart is going to beat right out of his chest the way it’s thrumming so hard and rapid that it almost hurts to breathe.)

 

It definitely doesn’t help that after the foreboding warning he has given to the class, Haruka’s blue gaze lands on Makoto’s figure, catches him off guard as he looks straight into Makoto’s green eyes with a kind of concentration that the brunet finds difficult to ignore and even more difficult to return, and proceeds to tell him to stand in the second row – a position that’s just behind and slightly to the right of Haruka, where Makoto can observe the instructor not only from the mirror but also follow the movements from watching his back.

 

“You can see better from there,” is Haruka’s explanation. 

 

It’s not going to bode well for Makoto, he can already tell, but he drags his equipment to the spot that Haruka has appointed anyway. His cheeks are burning, though he’d like to argue that it’s from the studio’s humid heat more than anything else.

 

No, Makoto’s not smitten from the first moment the dark-haired man gives him a small, encouraging smile when he admits that this is his first time doing yoga – Bikram or otherwise – and no, he’s definitely not staring unabashedly at the way the instructor’s shirt rides up when he stretches his arms skyward to show the sliver of pale skin and sharp jut of hipbones, or enjoying the cool sensation of his guiding fingers and gentle manner with which Haruka corrects his posture, hands careful and delicate and voice patient as he briefly explains what Makoto’s doing wrong, or listening too attentively to Haruka’s calm, soothing voice that blends into the room to create a surge of refreshing sound wave that washes over him during the breathing exercises.

 

No, he hasn’t done anything like that, because that would be inappropriate and rude, and Makoto, if anything, is the complete opposite of inappropriate and rude, as his friends and acquaintances would testify.

 

As he recovers from the Standing Separate Leg Stretching Pose, his head a little hazy from staring upside-down at the back of some red-haired lady’s head for the last thirty seconds while standing with his legs spread apart and arms extended so his fingers can wrap around his ankles, his spine burning with the unfamiliar stretch of his upper back and arm muscles and tendons, Makoto straightens up and gradually lifts his head, vision swimming slightly but then his focus hones in onto the back of his instructor, and let’s just say that Haruka’s figure from behind – all lean physique, elegant arcs and planes, and bodacious lines – is an aesthetic all on its own.

 

Fuck. Who is he kidding, anyway? Nanase Haruka will be the death of him.

 

-

 

“Mako-chan, how was your first Bikram yoga experience?” Nagisa jumps out from the corner of the lobby just as Makoto steps out of the change room, freshly showered and muscles taut from the ninety-minute session, his sports bag slung over one shoulder. “Don’t you feel more relaxed after all that sweating and exercise?”

 

The blond, his light jacket with the studio’s logo stamped across the back tied lopsidedly over his shoulders, tugs him over to one of the cushioned benches by the side of the wall as more people filter in through the front entrance, a few of them waving their cheerful greetings to Nagisa while scanning their membership cards, and some newcomers are registering at the front desk while chattering with their companions.

 

Makoto slumps down on one end of the bench and drops his bag unceremoniously by his feet, pale green eyes flickering to meet Nagisa’s boisterous cerise ones as he eagerly waits for the brunet’s answer.

 

Where should he even start?

 

“You didn’t tell me the instructor is going to be an illegally attractive man. My body wasn’t ready for that kind of thing,” Makoto throws him a harassed look, and adds as an afterthought, “Also, I didn’t think it was possible to sweat this much.”

 

By the end of the session, he has been drenched from head to toe in his own sweat that he can even wring his shirt out.

 

“That is exactly why I told you to take Haru-chan’s class,” Nagisa has the audacity to laugh and wink at him, the little rascal. “I knew you’d take a liking to him!”

 

Before Makoto can even answer with a witty comeback that doesn’t make him sound defensive or like a hopeless, awkward teenager who has an unattainable crush, the man himself appears from the doorway of the staff room, a grey towel patterned with cyan polka dots winded around his neck and a bottle of water in his hand.

 

“Haru-chan, over here!” Nagisa waves his co-worker over, and Makoto has half a mind to bolt out of the building or hide himself under the bench. He does neither of those things because the dark-haired man is already making his way towards them, a slight hint of a smile lifting the corner of his lips.

 

Makoto feels faint, and he doesn’t think it’s the excessive sweating from yoga.

 

“Nagisa,” he nods at the blond, who shifts to make space for Haruka to sit between the two friends, “And Makoto-kun, right?”

 

He nods numbly. Apparently, the language center in his brain has broken down the moment the yoga instructor glances over at him with a small, polite smile, blue eyes glimmering in the warm orange lights hanging from the ceiling.

 

“Did you enjoy your first class?” He takes careful sips of his water, and Makoto watches him gulp down by mouthfuls, lips tantalizingly pink and glossy as they wrap around the opening of the bottle. All the moisture in his mouth seems to have evaporated and replaced by dry cotton, and Makoto is having trouble swallowing as Haruka looks at him with an expectant expression on his face, his cheeks still a little rosy from class earlier.

 

Oh, right. He asked a question, and he’s waiting for him to answer. Right.

 

“Sweaty,” is the first word that pops out of his mouth, and when Makoto realizes belatedly what he’s just said, he tries to amend his embarrassment by adding, “And everything hurts, but in a good… sort of way?”

 

This is ridiculous. Makoto wishes he can find a hole and bury himself in it. It will be infinitely better than having to endure the undecipherable, searching look Haruka is sending his way.  

 

Unbeknownst to Haruka, Nagisa is hiding his smirk behind his palm, but his shoulders are shaking with silent laughter he’s forced to hold in, and Makoto is going to throttle this little devil he calls his childhood friend when there are no eyewitnesses around.

 

“That’s a pretty accurate description of the first time,” Haruka hides his amusement behind his water bottle, and then he’s turning his full attention on the blushing brunet, azure eyes locked on to his startled green ones. Makoto’s back immediately straightens as if letting the graceful yoga instructor see his slouching figure would taint Haruka’s impression of him. “I hope you’ll come back to give it another try though. The postures and the breathing exercises become much easier and flow more smoothly the more you practice them.”

 

“I-I will,” Makoto stutters, and swears at himself in his head at the way he sounds like a bumbling fool.

 

“Good,” Haruka nods with another tiny smile, the slight motion causing his forelocks to fall into his eyes, and gets to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I have another class to prepare.”  

 

“Please,” Makoto manages to choke out while Nagisa’s animated chirp of, “See you in a bit, Haru-chan!” basically overlaps Makoto’s squeak.

 

Haruka sends them a quick wave before he disappears behind the staff room entrance, the quiet hiss of the closing door a mocking jeer from the universe as Makoto covers his burning face with his hands, a sound akin to wailing of a dying animal trailing out of his mouth.

 

“What’s wrong?” Nagisa places a comforting hand on the brunet’s back.

 

“I’m done for,” Makoto’s pitiful moan is muffled behind his palm.

 

“You know what this calls for?”

 

Makoto looks at him warily, because he’s been friends with Hazuki Nagisa since they were in elementary school and he almost always knows what the blond is thinking even with the subtlest hint of his body language, and when Nagisa is wriggling his eyebrows in that ludicrous way of his like he’s doing now, Makoto is afraid of whatever idea the blond might spew in the spur of the moment, so naturally Makoto is going to adopt whatever plan Nagisa has devised.

 

“What?” he finally asks with a sigh.

 

“We’re going to shop for a new shirt,” Nagisa decides, fists gripped in fierce determination and eyes burning with endless passion as the desire of aiding his friend in his quest to get his crush to notice him fuels his energy.

 

“Really?” Makoto thinks he shouldn’t even be surprised anymore. Almost ninety-six percent of life’s problems, according to Nagisa’s philosophy, can be resolved by shopping and spending an excessive amount of money on things one doesn’t need. But Makoto is not about to question him; simply conversing with the blond is tiring enough as it is.

 

“Trust me.” His eyes glimmer with a resolute glow, and Makoto decides that whatever, just whatever. It’s not like he has any other better ideas.

 

-

 

The next Friday is dreary with thick grey clouds hanging over the city and gusts of wind that rattles Makoto’s bones as he fights his way in the rainstorm to get to the yoga studio.

 

His sense of self-confidence, which isn’t much to start with, has been significantly boosted by the loose-fitting forest green tank top made of some sort of eco-friendly bamboo material that Nagisa insists him on buying, even though he’s sure his wallet is weeping at the outlandish amount he’s paying for this measly piece of clothing.

 

Nagisa has assured him with two thumbs up plus a mischievous grin that the tank top perfectly compliments his upper body posture, his broad shoulders, and the expansive back muscles he has developed over his years of backstroke swimming back in high school, which Makoto has managed to keep by going to the gym and swimming laps at the university pool in between attending his classes and working shifts in a convenient store.

 

When Haruka strolls into the studio from the back door, and his eyes widen comically the moment he finds Makoto’s figure in the center of the room, the brunet can feel the heat in the dark blue of Haruka’s eyes – can almost taste it in the way he visually feeds on him, his mesmerized gaze tracing from his upper body down to the length of his legs.

 

Makoto smiles in greeting when their eyes lock onto each other’s as he tries to get that blushing under control, and when the dark-haired yoga instructor nods curtly to return the gesture, his throat swallowing hard and gaze averted, Makoto thinks this new shirt might be worth it after all.

**Author's Note:**

> This is all done in a rush so please forgive me for any mistakes or silliness. If you’ve enjoyed this, please consider casting a vote by liking or reblogging the post at the MakoHaru Festival Tumblr site (http://theofficialmakoharufestival.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


End file.
